Classroom Tip #6: Deliver Entertainment

I don't like being bored. I dread it.  I want to be entertained.


Not much has changed in this confession of who I am now and who I was at virtually all stages of my life!

Nothing hurts more than experiencing boredom-- in a job, at a party, a phone conversation or a movie I'm watching.  Boring is downright painful, so please don't ask me to sit through it.

Classroom Tip #7 Encourage a Winning Classroom

Goal: Think of creative ways for your students to contribute or practice during class.

Solutions for a large class:

Larger classes pose one problem: you can't pay as much individual attention to your students. However, the good thing about these types of classes is that your semesters are usually longer, which means you can track their growth and troubleshoot them better.

EPIK Teacher Resource Links

This is a list that a fellow 2010 EPIKer put together from our 2010 Teachers Handbook & Orientation.  It's super helpful and he was kind enough to laborously put it together for us. I wish I got his name so that I could credit him but seeing as I don't, let's just all wish him good things!

2010 EPIK Teachers Handbook & Orientation

Section 1- Korean Culture, Life and Society.

•Chapter 2: A Brief Introduction to the Korean History and Culture.

http://www.HyunwooSun.com
Remember Hyunwoo Sun? He boasted his twitter account and youtube fame… This is his personal website. You can follow him, as well as find a few language resources, here…

http://www.TalkToMeInKorean.com
Yup, this is the site for those who want to learn Korean.

http://www.Lang-8.com
A website for those interested in learning a new language.

How can you improve your students' learning (and hopefully, boost test scores)? Maybe you shouldn't ask me...

Our sixth graders have scored the lowest of their region. This test was something like the SATs and our school stood out as the worse ranked. This came as a shock to our school. All the sixth grade teachers were nervous and the VP and principal were humiliated. The English department grades 3-6 had to start upping their game and employ new practices to ensure higher test rankings in the future.

The witch cackles and my warm desk-warming days end

This winter, I'm definitely chained to my school prison.  Even my mother, who was visiting, desk-warmed with me just to spend time together.. and she caught a cold from it!  Sad, right?

We can only thank EPIK and the public school system for this insanity. I will only teach one "token" week of school in February; unfortunately, my desk-warming won't change those kids' test scores, improve the teaching level for next year or make my students regain their "smart" abilities.

Our students bad test scores-- not a grand surprise to me.

I could read a list of things the 6th grade curriculum at my school needs to improve--

5 Things Working at MTV taught me about teaching ESL

Classroom Tip #3: Having Students Grow "Smart Brains"

Goal : Make your lessons challenging but not too difficult. Learn how to give them more without it being too much.

Everyone wants to feel like they're growing smart brains. Everyone wants to be challenged. While no one wants to feel too much difficulty or struggle in their lessons, they do want to feel like they've earned their rights to meeting the next chapter with some competency. People want to know they've earned the doggie bone and with a little struggle and challenge, they feel they worked for it.

Use your Smart Students to Teach the Class

The reason why I like the Give Me More technique is because I've seen it work in my classes and this is great when you have students of all different levels.  When the advanced students reach for adding more to what they give me in answers and responses, they actually end up teaching and training the rest of my class for me. Why? They have already role modeled the feat of learning as being possible. 

You can use the smart kids set the standard goal of excellence for the rest of your class to work towards.




GRRRL TRAVELER © 2008
All artwork/publications are licensed and must be credited or linked back to this site. Non-commercial use only. Further permissions: contact www.grrrltraveler.com.

'Give Me More' Technique: Using it for Multi-level Adult Students (Part II)

 First, my parent's class is back on the upswing.

Yay, I don't suck! My Parent's English Class has averaged over half the original attendance... approximately six students a session.

Definitely, not bad. The class is free and dropouts after the first day is to be expected.

Occasionally, I realize I'm like some of the professors/teachers that I never liked.. my whiteboard gets a bit crazy with all the additional stuff I try to squeeze into my lesson and rather than erase everything
(for fear I may need to refer to the examples or that my students haven't finished writing), I just add it

Classroom Tip #2: Employ the Art of Listening

Photo from: mentalhelp.com

Listening is an important art that many of might have heard about, but don't always apply. Most of the time as people, we're too self-preoccupied-- we try to push learning onto our students and worry about making the classroom schedule match the clock. Also, there's another problem. As a teacher, one shouldn't merely reduce "listening" to having good ears that pick out incorrect pronunciation and patterns. No, that's called "hearing". What I'm talking about is an entirely different sort of art focused on the ability to read your students and scan over them with your entire awareness

Reading your students will shed insight into your class's ability to learn from you.
Something as simple as reading your students can lend you clues about what and how they're processing what their lessons. It's the difference from getting  a look of "I get it!" vs. "I'm completely lost".  Aside from getting to know your students' habits and personalities, this can also shed insight
into deeper concerns like whether a student is having trouble with the lesson or simply lacks confidence in their speaking ability; whether they are shy, is lazy or bored.

For example, when I'm in front of my class speaking, I try to listen to what's being said and what isn't... 70% of the time, I'm not only reading lip syncs as they're doing repeat speaking drills (you'll catch at least 1/3 of your students faking -- either mouthing the words or pretending to mouth the words)  but I'm also reading individual facial expressions, actions and postures.  If I see a majority of my students bored and sleepy; I've got to change my approach to wake them up or my lesson is as good as dead.  If some of my students look "lost", then I know who to give more attention to when I walk around the classroom.  If someone has crippled self-esteem, I try to find ways to challenge them with material that might boost their confidence. And when enough patterns establish themselves, I know what I have to work on troubleshooting...

If you can read your students you'll be able to troubleshoot their learning problems, know how to change your teaching style to spark more enthusiasm, you'll become a more effective teacher!





GRRRL TRAVELER © 2008
All artwork/publications are licensed and must be credited or linked back to this site. Non-commercial use only. Further permissions: contact www.grrrltraveler.com.

Give me More! Technique: Step 1

Video Clip from Oliver! ("I'd like some more...")

It's easy to get into that repetitive mode of teaching, when you realize students need to follow a pattern for your flow of teaching to go smoothly. They chime and repeat after you, occasionally fooling you into thinking you've done a great job.

Then lessons later, a time for greater application comes and it's their time to show you what they've

Classroom Tip #1: Raising Stakes

When I wrote my post, Raising Stakes on Learning English?, I realized that I stumbled upon a valuable concept and goal for students in the classroom.Thus, I'm modifying it a bit here when I talk about teaching young students.

Stakes, motivators and incentive goals.
From the standpoint of a student-- if you don't think you're going to need to use what you're learning, then why learn it? 

But if you need it because you will...
-- perform it in front of the entire class.
-- need to use it for an important activity (i.e. to compete in a game, have a test, etc).

Then these are motivators which will make you concentrate harder to focus on your learning. Why?
Your learning the lesson is necessary to your survival in something important. These are called stakes.

Whether it's adults or children, it's up to you to occasionally create stakes in your lesson activities. Adults are sometimes said to be easier because their sense of stake is created internally. Children however, haven't learned that ability yet and motivating stakes are often external. This is why in Korea, many English lessons in the public schools are taught through games and incentive points. The one thing Korean students are is highly competitive.

What are some other ways you can create stakes in your classroom lessons?

The Power of a Question: 4 Tricks to Creating Questions your ESL students can answer:

3rd grade textbook flashcards- "Look at your hands".

Anthony Robbins would say "There's Power in the Question"!
When faced with difficult life choices and what the universe brings you in solutions, the answer is always found in the question. Consider it like juggling Ali Baba's keys to find the password "Open Sesame"; in order for the universe provide you with the fitting solutions you seek, you must first ask the right question.

Undoubtedly, as an ESL elementary teacher in the Korean classroom, the same rule of theory applies. If you want students to answer you, they must first understand you; for them to do that, you must learn how to give easy to understand questions.

What's the right question?
This takes time and trial-and-error practice to figure out. I'm past my 2nd semester; I still have a bit of difficulty. Coming up with good questions are necessary for testing students' listening and
comprehension skills. When I first arrived, my questions were too conversational and open-ended. My students' response: silence and a sea of clueless gazes staring back at me. A dead-zone. As a teacher you feel like a mouse trapped in a corner when you get this response. You try to backtrack and end up confusing your students even more- by now you're just speaking garblish! When I got into enough of these uncomfortable corners, I knew I had to start changing the way I asked the question.

4 Tricks on Creating Questions your ESL students can answer:

• Keep it concise.

Easy tip, but hard to implement. So I like to treat it like a practice in creating bullet points.

I have a visual image of a sentence, which I carry in my head and it's something close to this sentence I'm typing. 

 When I go in front of my class I try to pare this visual image down to 1/2 its content and in bite-sized pieces.

•  I'm thinking of a picture.
•  It looks like this sentence.

• Avoid the open-ended question.

Asking What's happening in this scene?  can feel like asking an ESL student for the meaning of life. Try asking that to your 3rd graders.  Response? Clueless silence. Furthermore, "What's happening..." is more of a colloquial expression and not in the textbooks. While this type of questioning might generate many answers and brainstorming, your students may not have enough vocabulary at their grasp.

Also in the end, the students don't know what you want them to answer. Unless you have advanced students, this type of questioning might stump your kids. The younger you go, their vocabulary and comprehension skills are still forming so you'll have to state what you want in a more specific manner.

• Ask directional questions and ones which seek specific answers that the students have just heard or learned in the story.

The trick is to have your questions lead the answer and reinforce the vocabulary they know. Avoid the open-ended question. Say you show this video of an interaction... I'll use grade 3 as my example:

Grade 6; Lesson 6: How Many Cows.

My Questions:

• Who is this?
• Where are Nami & Tony?
• What did Nami ask Tony?
• How many dogs does Tony have?

• Omit unnecessary transitions.

To not revert to your own unconscious speech habits words, it can feel like you're giving up smoking.
Compared to Korean and Asian lanuages, the English language as too many words-- the, a, an, so, like, etc.. To make it worse, as westerners, we have the habit of littering our sentences it with unconscious pause/filler words and excess mutterings (i.e. ...like..., yeah, okay..).  I have an unconscious habit of using my own nicotine space fillers and transitions. These days I've gotten to catching myself and omitting it can feel hard. Can you guess what my habits are?

"So class, now we're going to play a game, okay? Okay, so this is what you will do. Okay, you will separate into 3 teams..." 

This is really bad grammar, right? How many unnecessary pause fillers did I use? But taking the example I mentioned above, this is my new version-

"We're going to play a game now! First- Team A, Team B, Team C... Second- You will..." 

Let the students drive the lesson.

Rather than being a lecturer (which I enjoy), I need to have my students  drive the lesson. This lets me know if they understand the material. If no one can answer my question, that means no one understands what I'm saying and the lesson can't progress.  Consequences? I won't I complete my lesson within the 40 min time mark and we'll have a double load in the next class session.

As a native English teacher/N.E.T., having my students listen and comprehend my questions is just as important as what they learn in the textbook/CD-Rom lessons. While they may have a Korean co-teacher to explain should we hit a wall, the fact I'm asking questions makes the class a bit more of an immersive experience. I have to ask my students to process the story and what they just saw or heard in the dialogue. This is practicing conversation with me. So, I have to prepare a bit as to how I will ask them these questions.

Do you have any tricks to forming questions for your ESL  classroom?

4 Tricks for Getting Slow ESL Learners to Start Learning Fast.

picutre by http://justicebuilding.blogspot.com/


1. Always get the bad student on your side and the rest will fall in line.
No one wants to be the absolute worst student of the class but when you have one, he sets the bar for the rest to act wild. But what happens then, when your worst student gets better? No one wants to wear that crown...

2. Kids will rise to the expectation you set for them.
If you expect them to be stupid or bad, they'll meet that expectation. But if you see potential in them, they'll see it in themselves.

3. Give them higher challenges but don't make them unreachable.
Everyone appreciates a good challenge. Give a student something easy, they'll get lazy and lose respect for it. Expect too much of your students and you'll only succeed in
alienating them from what you want them to learn. Somewhere you have to play the grey line of challenging tests. Give them a chance to define their own challenges; occasionally, you need to let them set their own bar or a bar that challenges their unending potential.


4. Always focus on the special skills and talents they have to encourage confidence.
Sometimes, it's hard to find redeemable qualities about a bad student, but it doesn't have to be big. It could be as small  "Hey, you write very nice "S"'s". Whatever it is, point it out... in front of everyone. Make that student the role model every once in a while and you may see a silent pride and a giant shift called confidence. Why? They need to know they're good at something. This is called the sweet taste of success and it gives them confidence to want to be better! An achievement, no matter how small is an achievement for kids.

During one of our recent classes, I played a brilliant Powerpoint game I found on Waygook.org called the Olympics (awesome awesome game on comparisons-I'll post it later!)  Students work in teams and must send up an athlete they think can win the event, like who is the strongest (arm wrestling)? Or who has the longest hair? ...

We were short on time so my CT wanted me to stick to the textbook vocab words. "Biggest" was on the list, BUT the ppt had the event -- Who has the smallest feet? Knowing Chanhyuk was our smallest student and the one most challenged by learning, I switched in the small feet event and when it came up, the kids all roared with laughter and cheered his name. Little Chan hyuk was so proud he was of his tiny feet! But it encouraged classroom recognition and confidence for little Chan hyuk.

Can you transform bad students into Good ones?

If looks could kill, you'd be his next victim. Welcome to 6th grade...

Always get the bad students on your side and the rest will follow.
No one wants to be the absolute worst and if you have one of those student like that in your class, he/she will set the bar for the rest of your bad eggs to go crazy.

This is advice from my mom, a retired elementary school teacher. She offered me this tip as one of a list of many, as she laid it before me and my 6th grade co-teacher after visiting my school and sitting in my 6th grade classes last spring.  Whoever thinks the kids of school teachers have it easy, think again... My co-teacher got the polite version. I got the accusatory and disgusted one when my mom couldn't understand how I could be her child and still not know how to manage my 6th grade classes. She actually has a reputation with other schools and teachers as the teacher that turns bad students into good ones.

But what can you do when your co-teacher does want to implement strong classroom management skills, yet insists on being THE teacher the students look to? Well, you get dragged around like a kite pulled by a long string on a day when there's no wind....


Things have changed since, but at the time most classes felt manageable, with the exception of one class... 

"Sometimes I wanted to tell my students--'You make me want to die'." 
-- homeroom teacher of Class 6-3

Shocking quote, eh? But if you had this class, you might think the same thing too. Class 6-3 always emitted a deep and agonizing groan from me- an "Oh my god...Why?" ... I obviously wasn't alone. Were they that bad? By Korean standards...worse.

I'm a hardened ex-New Yorker, who's dealt with bigger things in life, but this class was horrible! My girls were more bully than boys, I had kids I thought could be future Korean mafia (or the sons of them) and who would say curse words to me in Korean and laugh at me cause I couldn't understand it, and my slow kids wouldn't lift a disinterested finger to try. At one point, I actually yelled at and walked out on them. The class was like a house of cards. If one twitched, the entire balance would tumble down. 

What did we do to change them?
Aside from my co-teacher threatening them with the lie that "Christine actually understands Korean, so she knows what you are saying to her", I honestly don't know. We tried many things. I gave my attention to many students and spotlight praise has been a great dangling carrot. However, there are two students that we worked with, whose change I feel affected the whole class.

Chan-hyuk, the Mouse
Chan-hyuk was the absolute king of this nightmare class. He isn't a big bully, tough guy or have a loud voice; in fact, he is tiny and soft spoken. He is our class mouse. But when he wants attention his tiny stir can be disruptive -- kicking the back of student desks, turning around trying to get others to play with him, throwing things and generally, faking absolute disinterest throughout class. Speaking-wise, his tongue always got in the way of comprehensible pronunciation. Even if he tried, he'd slaughter his attempt with his tongue. Instead, he took the easy route of I'm stupid; leave me alone.

My co-teacher and I spent some time with him and to my slower kids, I occasionally speak a few words of Korean to remind them they can't get away with things.

Encouragement is the key to confidence. Every student craves attention and essentially wants to be your model student. For Chan-hyuk, pats on the back and grand gestures of praise in front of the class has given him a ladder to climb towards confidence. I also find, he's one of the students who likes the speed games I play with them (whispering) (and I occasionally rig the games so that my slow students have time to prepare their answer or get something we've worked on together!)

Chan-hyuk's progress is fickle but I can see him developing visible confidence along the way, such that he actually focuses, pays attention and TRIES. These days, he loves to participate, he tries to do speaking games correctly and when we have the class repeat words, he's not just faking a moving mouth. Okay, sometimes... But I've never seen such a 180 degree change in someone.

Hyojin, our strong man with a mysterious burden

No one can explain to me what's wrong with Hyojin, other than he had a mental illness last semester which had him out of school for a couple of months. Since, I think the class labeled him as the "class nut," but Hyojin is our gentle class giant with an infrequent and uncontrollable twitch. He's not a bad student, just a little slower due to his illness or mood swings.

Hyo-jin's always been one of my favorite students from the start, but I couldn't tell you why. Probably because he was one of the handful of obedient students who'd participate well when  our class was possessed by other devils.  And when he's confident, he tries to "big brother" the more troubled students, like Chanhyuk.   At times, he tries hard; and at times he completely shuts down. His learning curve isn't as great as Chan-hyuk's but because the kids don't like him much, his vocal participation in class helps.   Like Chan-hyuk, Hyo-jin is one of the students I keep an eye on when I make my rounds in class. They're the ones I spend time working with.

Last semester we held a "special kids class", every Tuesday after lunch and for 20 minutes. It was too short but all our weaker students got a chance to review with more attention paid to them. I think this encouraged Hyo-jin. He'd try to make each class religiously and if he couldn't, then he'd actually look pained.  While Hyo-jin still occasionally shuts down, he does do a lot better than he did before. These days, he participates with confidence!

In fact,... 95% of the students in our "special kids class" have gotten stronger in class participation and have been consistently raising their hands to give answers during normal class! It's as if a bit of attention has given them all confidence that they can improve and succeed.

Can two good apples can sweeten the barrel of bad?
Um,... yes. These days, due to the fact these two students are making improvements, the entire energy and mentality of the class has shifted. The mafiosos are shaping up and are more attentive in their learning-- they try and participate. My girl bullies are showing themselves to be intelligent "girlie-girls" and my slow students are making visible improvements.  My worst class is now my best class of the semester-- my diamond in the rough.

Always get the bad students on your side and the rest will follow. 

I guess my mom was right after all...   Have you ever had a bad class go good?

Teaching English to Teachers (Lesson Plan: Teaching Classroom English)...sorta

A video sample of my Powerpoint presentation (I did this a while back)

I love learning languages and nothing is more painful to me than watching a language teacher, who has no facial expression, speaks with flat delivery and no vocal intonation. Painful.

 Learning a language is learning about cultural expressions, intonation, vocal pitch, gestures, facial

Teaching Koreans: Common English Mistakes Made by Koreans

So I happened upon this blog and video, "Common English Mistakes Made By Koreans #1", by chance. I think it's just brilliant and very funny.  The video is done by On My Way to Korea. Enclosed is a link to the actual site with an English transcript of what Matt is saying (as he's speaking in Korean).

I used this video for my teachers as a warmup, but it easily ended up being the entire class when my teachers wanted to practice and to clarify other words!  These are also helpful for recognizing mistakes our Korean students make.

I wish he did more vids on the matter but this seems to be the only one. Enjoy and if you like it, feel free to leave a comment on his blog.

Ice Breaker Games for Adult Introductions (and my first Adult English class!)

First day of my Parent's English class. I was nervous and upset--

a. My co-teacher had given me the class textbook (I ordered) that very morning, which meant...

b. I only had a small window of time after lunch to prepare a 1st Day of Class lesson plan for a 100 minute class! Yup. Unfortunately, my recycled About Me Introduction ppt presentation was not going to take a full 100 minutes.

c. I discovered during lunch that the textbooks hadn't arrived and that the parents would be without them, so...

d. I had to make handout copies of the pages I would teach and ...

c. It was at 2PM when I came to that realization (that, not having textbooks stuff) after it

Why I think Speed Games are great for my slow students

I'm a big fan of speed games, especially when it comes to using them as class warmups on a Monday morning.

For me, there's nothing better than a surprise attack that will pop open my elementary students' crusty eyes and get their little hearts and adrenaline racing with a game, which forces them to think on their toes. 

My first class teaching Teaching Teacher's English ( Introductions, Gossip & Glamour)

Name - ___________________________

Level - Beginner / Intermediate

Topics for Learning English:

1.      Holidays

2.      Classroom English Terms and Phrases

3.      Birthdays

4.      Celebrities  

5.      Tipping

6.      Children and Family  

7.      Dating  

8.      Telling Time

9.      Days of the week

10.  Months in a year

11.  Western Slang

12.  Free time and Hobbies   

13.  Gender Roles

14.  Travel

15.  Music

16.  The Weather

17.  Movies

18.  Transportation

19.  Restaurants and Eating Out

20.  Money and Shopping

21.  Giving / Asking - Directions in English

22.  Introducing yourself

ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS?

 The above checklist worksheet is something I passed out to my teachers at the beginning of class. It's a list of subjects they might want to learn and I have my teachers mark or rate what their preference for topics.

First Class teaching Teacher's English

I really didn't know what to prepare or what to expect.

I spoke to other EPIKers as to how they were handling their Teaching Teacher's English class. EPIKer Anika had some great tips as she was excited about teaching her teachers and
had several lessons worked out. Her checklist above is what I thought was brilliant.

Extracting answers from my Koreans teachers

A class needs a curriculum for structure and when you can't teach from a textbook, this can be hard--

I will be the one creating the textbook, the Powerpoint presentations and possibly worksheets. Getting teachers' interest is a way to form a curriculum.

But if you ask adults for their ideas or interests, it's like asking to be frustrated by the response of silence. Getting my teachers to speak about their personal goals or expectations for the class wasn't easy. Many of them were either, too shy to express what they want; and  some, I suspect didn't quite know what they wanted out of the class either.

Asking for ideas from your students? No.

Bad idea.

It was a god-send that I printed out the above questionnaire in advance as a safety solution. I had the students fill them out in class and voila! I have a direction to shape my class curriculum.

Class #1: Activity :  Give students an article and generate a  class discussion from it

Didn't quite have faith in this activity but it was recommended by another EPIKER. I hear some EPIKers will pass out articles for students to read and generate class discussions from. I find this a bit droll but it was my first class and I didn't have a safe springboard.

I passed out an article from BreakingNewsEnglish.com about Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy (my document) rumors & did a discussion about gossip and rumors.What they thought of gossip & who they would want to hear gossip about , etc...

I didn't get to do my ppt Intro, so...

Class 2: Introductions

The Non-traditional approach to Introductions:

Introduce yourself via Cosmo Questionnaires

In the U.S. many of us women have at least done one in our lifetime. This is a more extended answer of a questionnaire (no spicy content or choices to choose from. I have students choose from the list of questions to Ask/Answer  Are you a Cosmo Girl/Guy?  to other students when they do this. They do it for 3 minutes and rotate partners. 

- I got this from some teacher's idea site (I wish I could remember so that I could give them credit; I think he was an EPIKer). The questionnaire was named something else, but seeing as I was starting my class on the subject of Gossip & Glamour, this was a nice continuation.

Finally, time for my introduction

My extended version of my Powerpoint Introduction to the Teachers, spoke a bit about my challenges in learning the Korean language.

My PPT Introduction of my stats, my former job, my birthdate year + the following inserts which I made:

.

.

.

Teaching English to Koreans if you don't know Korean? Psst- there's a formula!

How are you going to teach English to Koreans if you don't know the language?
This was the question I got from many friends and family just before leaving for Korea.

"I dunno?" was my answer.

Somehow, I had faith there'd be something in the EPIK process, allowing me to teach English in a way my Korean students to understand. New to teaching and teaching abroad in a country where I didn't know the language, the obvious question to ask is-- how you will communicate with your Korean students? It's not terribly difficult. The good news: 

There's a Formula to Teaching in a Korean public school:



1) There's a national curriculum and many (but not all) public schools teach from the same or similar textbook.

The video below is from a Listen and Repeat section for Grade 3: Lesson: Happy Birthday.  It's not the same "actors" as in my school's textbook but its the same lesson, character names and dialogue.

2) Every school seemingly teaches the same lesson at the same pace.
  Most of Korea is now probably on a Lesson 12 in their textbooks, for 3rd grade, 4th, 5th & 6th as I type.


3) Textbook Format: There are 4 sections to one lesson.
As a general guideline, this is the structure I've broken down so you can easily follow:

Section a) Introduction NEW VOCABULARY & EXPRESSIONS of the lesson.

Section b) PRACTICE & LISTEN

Section c) Learn to READ & WRITE the words and expressions

Section d) Review

(a- Look & Listen, Listen & Repeat, b- Chant/Song,  c-Read & Write/Roleplay,  d-Review)

Resources for Lesson Plans:

• Korean-school.blogspot.com is a great site that has the textbook flashcard (covering lessons #1-8 for grades 3rd-6th.

• Waygook.org is my most favorite site for lesson plans and ideas for many grade levels. It usually also has a rolling list of lessons as they come out in the classroom, as every school teaches the same lesson at the same pace.

Introducing Yourself to Your Korean Students through Powerpoint

For my first week of elementary school EFL, I wasn't expected to teach.

Still, I thought I'd do an Introduction in Powerpoint anyways. Afterall, my kids will want to know about me anyways, and because I have pictures/video to share of where I'm from, I'd like to get them engaged from the start.

The first lessons for the Korean elementary school year is always about "Making Introductions" anyways.So my co-teachers loved the idea and the fact it roughly took 10 minutes of classroom time.

Enclosed is the Powerpoint presentation.

Hopefully you can open it but if you can't, please email me and I'll send it to you. Good luck to all you teachers.

Fighting!

Classroom Observations:

1. Most of my students know who Obama is! (gasp-- I don't even know who the South Korean president is...)
2. The video of Elementary school children in Hawaii doing cultural activities actually kept them awake  (*Tip: kids like seeing other kids in videos- if you can actually shoot the videos at their eye level, it's even better.)
3. They are curious about you and your personal life, like family.
4. Local pop celebrities: for them as a wake-up surprise if they were drifting off. When they saw the performer, Bi/Rain, some of them shouted out his name and got excited.
5. Travel photos- *Tip: photos of kids, yourself, and animals are interesting to them.


Download Powerpoint ("Hello, what is your name3.ppt")